Capitalism values profitability above technological and human progress

Agreed.

I believe now that capitalism has become so efficient, that it inhibits large leaps in human progress. Notice that it took gigantic public works projects initiated by governments to accomplish the Apollo program and even the Concorde program in your pic. I feel that competent government has to direct the economy.

Look at how wasteful our current system is. We waste precious natural resources, like Rare Earth Metals by making worthless iPhones out of them so that some mindless consumer can babble about their welfare checks, and allowing the people who sell these worthless devices to distance themselves from humanity with exorbitant wealth.

Capitalism, IMO, is definitely not the answer alone. It is too focused on short-term gain and structurally incapable of long-term planning and development.

Capitalism mis-directs the best and brightest minds available to society and diverts their talents into developing bullshit like smartphone apps instead of ways to terraform Mars.

Capitalism gave us pic attached, and that is progress.

Rivalry drives progress and the better product drives profitability.

What if the rivalry is for the best ass-plugs and consumes all resources in the process, and then society collapses down to pre-industrial levels after a massive extinction?

just thought about what someone once said to me:
"there is more physics PhDs working in finance than there are working in physics"

Profit and progress are synonyms.

You just want to redistribute money like a leech, and by doing so you will actually create the perfect environment for crony capitalism and rampant inequality to come to fruition.

The ends will always be a mirror image of the means.

This has to be a troll post. You sound like a child.

Rivalry necessarily negatively impacts profits. One of the most competitive sectors in the world, UK supermarkets, has around 7-8 big players and razor thin margins, like 0.1-1% on average. The better 'product' is irrelevant in this sector because price is really what consumers value. Therefore your statement that rivalry drives progress via better products = profitability really is quite verifiable in its stupidity.

You are visibly shaken by this post. What happened?

it values profit above everything - human livelihood and dignity, the planet

the trick is making it profitable - so technological progress is profitable (to a point)

cultural progress is not profitable in and of itself

the real deal killer is that we have no way to decouple "free markets / profit" from "using resources / destroying the earth" - doesnt work until we blow out the laws of physics like star trek , best hope is we hold off long enough to mine asteroids or just bottle ourselves off in digital format and run "simulations" of reality to play in

That must be why all the communist nations are generally backwaters of technological and human progress, right?

Don't bring up communism, it just gives them fuel to introduce the gray fallacy in which it's assumed that the reasonable position to take is to find a balance between capitalism & socialism.

Which is of course like saying there needs to be a balance between rape and consensual sex.

No, economic rivalry drives marketability, and marketability drives profitability. Consumers don't buy the best product, they either buy what's cheap or they'll buy the one with name recognition.

> people are not smart like I am, they are too dumb to be trusted with their own money, they should give it to people like me

This is why $15/hr minimum wage is a good thing.

Robots will place idiots in entry level positions. These will only get more technologically advance as time goes on and they replace more and more workers, which in affect, will bring humans closer to skynet.

Poverty also breeds crime, so once you replace these minimum wage fucks, they'll only cause more crime. Not sure if we're ready as a society for $15/hr just for this reason.

Unless of course you're a retarded shill voting for Bernie Sanders where every one gets everything for free anyways, then go for it.

I never said they should give money to me, I just said they don't necessarily choose the best product either overall or for their individual situation. Is that really a debated topic?

They can do as they please with it, I won't try to take that from them, but let's stop with the farce that when phone manufacturers gimp their batteries to make devices a fraction of a millimeter thinner, or any other instance of designers sacrificing utility to pander to the masses, that they're making a "better product."

>I just said they don't necessarily choose the best product either overall or for their individual situation. Is that really a debated topic?

Some people are better at managing money and making financial decisions, but no one spends other people's money as well as they spend their own.

>Robots will place idiots in entry level positions.

Robots are just more automation, automation has been happening since the dawn of agriculture.

Why are you falling for the same meme people have been falling for 100s of years.

>Having profits means you provide value to someone thus creating progress.

As someone pursuing their PhD, science has been ruined by the government giving grants to only new ideas. No one cares about experiments that test theoretical ideas, especially ones that disprove theorems. Thus about 1/3 of new articles in Physics are actually wrong. It's worse in Neuroscience and in Medicine where 50% is false, and are not reproducible.

>technological progress is highly profitable.
Can be highly profitable

>This is why $15/hr minimum wage is a good thing.

I can agree that it wont raise prices at all.

And we won't be back to square one.

>Capitalism values profitability above technological and human progress.
True. Although really your picture only implies that companies value profitability above technological or human progress. Which is definitely true. Companies value profitability over everything else.

Luckily we have the government, for which profitability is of no concern and technological advancement is sometimes a concern - mostly in war time to be fair, but also partly during peace time.

Also check out the american school of economics:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_School_(economics)

> It consisted of these three core policies:

>protecting industry through selective high tariffs (especially 1861–1932) and through subsidies (especially 1932–70)
>government investments in infrastructure creating targeted internal improvements (especially in transportation)
>a national bank with policies that promote the growth of productive enterprises rather than speculation.

>Luckily we have the government
Please comrade. The government has no incentive to ever create value. It's not held accountable except to the established interests which form the base of its power. It exists solely to reinforce the power of existing businesses and power brokers.

>War generates technology
No it doesn't. War destroys this. Sometimes new technologies are developed in spite of it but never because of it.

>But muh 'murican ingenuity, muh atom bombs, muh jet planes
All of that stuff was developed before the war. It was applied in practical ways during the war, but the war in no way contributed to its development. Armies are not test tubes, they are weapons, and the people who run them are not interested in science, they are interested in killing people.

>>protecting industry through selective high tariffs (especially 1861–1932) and through subsidies (especially 1932–70)
on tariffs:

The United States continued these policies throughout the later half of the 19th century. President William McKinley (1897–1901) stated at the time:

[They say] if you had not had the Protective Tariff things would be a little cheaper. Well, whether a thing is cheap or dear depends upon what we can earn by our daily labor.

>virtually everyone having access to the Internet
>not on $3000 computers but $200 phones
>access to all creativity and knowledge for the masses
yeah smartphones are pure shit we should have a politician dictate what's important instead like a socialist/communist regime. Why don't you run for president Bernie?

Aviation has taken huge leaps in the last 50 years and just keeps improving.

You can fly LA/Sydney for 1 grand return, with humane leg room, 3 meals and 100s of movies and TV shows on your own personal TV screen.

So much of this is delusional that it doesn't even merit a serious reply. It is clear that you will make up your own reality where the truth doesn't match your ideology, thus arguing with you is worthless. Please kill yourself back to /pol/.

Whole Foods = high price, differentiation strategy

Walmart = low price strategy

Grocery stores that compete on price lose because they're trying to use the same strategy when someone else is already winning that race. Pick a different approach.

Who the fuck are you to decide what is valuable? What makes sending garbage to the garbage more important than stamping garbage into iPhones? There are no time limits on anything for humanity, there is only a time limit for you. You've gotten pissy because you'll die on Earth and not Mars, and instead of admitting that you just think it's cool, you go a further step of saying everyone else is stupid. People work and decide what to spend their money on. Why should they instead spend that money on your pet projects instead of mine? And what is social progress such that a market system can stop it?

Op, the Internet made it less essential to fly quickly at such high cost when we can telecommute easier.

War creates desperation for new technology. Ventures considered too risky in peacetime are tried. Inventions are rolled out with the battlefield being the testing ground. When the rich are desperate, the money flows into r and d. Also any state secret tech is revealed to the wider world as weapons are sent to war.

>Above
>highly inefficient and dangerous design that's could hardly hold any passengers and only upside was gottagofast
>below
>a highly efficient and safe design that makes mass transportation safe, affordable and comfortable to the masses.

>cool looking and fast = better and more advanced
you're an idiot
there's more technology and advancement in the Dreamliner than in a concord.

concords were objectively shit
do you really think we should have more of those things?
those 6 concords literally have the same seating capacity all together as the one below
why would having 6 x the amount of planes in the sky, when one can do the job be a better idea just because they can go a little faster?

One apple is very much like another. It's pretty irrelevant what brand of meat I make a burger with, it simply is what it is. (Assuming that no meat packer is suicidal enough to start advertising that they have 25% less rat shit that their competitors.) There is no real way to compete with better products in food. That said, I'm sure that pre-modern societies would resent your idea that achieving a lower price of food isn't a good thing. That's really only something a really arrogant and privileged academic circlejerker who has never felt hunger pangs would dare say.

The concorde died because there wasn't enough of a market for it because of government regulation. Environmental activists screamed loud enough and had it mostly banned from jurisdictions. The only places you could fly one was from major hubs traveling across oceans. Governments destroyed the markets for innovation to be profitable, capitalism just provides the most efficient return based off of the set of variables.

Same thing happened to nuclear energy research as well. Most reactors we use today are based off of designs from the 60s for a nuclear submarine. Environmentalists screamed loud enough and the costs became prohibitively expensive, governments regualted nuclear to be unprofitable etc. The ironic thing about this was the fact that the carbon based power source (oil and coal) mostly funded these groups back in the day before they turned on them. A government can speed up the innovation process by funding things like the Apollo missions but eventually there would be a private group who would accomplish the same thing in the goal of making a profit off of their innovation/ invention. Stream engines, railroads, mass produced steel, gasoline, electrical systems (lightbulb) were all initially created by private individuals and made those owners of those companies more powerful than governments at the time.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-Concorde_Project
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supersonic_transport#History

And the concorde made british airways a profit as well, they had to kill them because they were at the end of their life and the increased maintenance costs would make them unprofitable simalr to a old car with many miles on it.
concordesst.com/retire/faq_r.html

The space program had no economic value to the average Joe. The same goes for wars and welfare. Very few people would willing pay for those things hence government take wealth by force.

Are you trolling or really THIS retarded?

Capitalism and the market aren't mysterious, abstract entities, it's PEOPLE who drive the market.

Supersonic flights were scrapped because the jets burned too much fuel, which made the ticket price higher and PEOPLE decided the pro of getting to their destination one or two hours quicker wasn't worth the price difference.

People and their interests drive capitalism and the market in a free society, unlike in communist shitholes were people are slaves and forced to pay for whatever the ruling party decided they should pay for, you are no better than anyone and you are not "enlightened" to know better than the force of the market what should be the prioroties of people and THEIR money.

fucking this op is a fag, profitability and technological progress go hand in hand

>one apple is very much like another
Spoken like a true pleb. You really can't taste the difference between a macintosh and a honeycrisp? What about the difference between a New York strip and a flank steak? Your examples are bad and you should feel bad.

>The space program had no economic value to the average Joe.

You're a short-sighted dimwit.

The Apollo programmed spawned so many new technologies in the 70s, 80s and 90s, that a good chunk of our current economy relies on the methods and materials developed, i.e. software.

And, because it was a public-private partnership, a lot of the technology was efficiently disseminated into the commercial world for everyone to benefit.

If Apollo was strictly private, most of the new technologies wouldn't have seen the light of day.

>Who the fuck are you to decide what is valuable?

It's obvious to anyone who knows what the fundamental purpose of the human specie is: proliferation.

That involves getting off of this space rock before we get squished by some arbitrary calamity of nature.

Colonizing Mars is the first step; an insurance policy for survival.

>There are no time limits on anything for humanity

Wrong again. It's sad to see someone with so little literacy and exposure to reality develop such strong, misguided opinions.

Extinction on this planet is a CERTAINTY for us, which is proven by the geologic record right before us. Therefore we have a limited amount of time available to us before the next chance encounter with a piece of space rock. Now, with our industrial civilization, the odds have never been better, but are being squandered because we're distracted for pursuing capitalism for the sake of capitalism, instead of a greater goal.

This is where capitalism fails. It's a great vehicle to get to a certain target, but should not be the target itself.

We need a broad, strategic plan. Globalism will eventually result in a one world government, better capable of directing humanity and the economy.

>Why should they instead spend that money on your pet projects instead of mine?

I see what your mental defect is now, you're a moral relativist.

I run into you zombies with this brain rot very often nowadays. Somehow, the Millennial generation got infected with this sickness though primary schooling.

You can't even form a strong, coherent opinion because of relativistic brain rot.

There are absolute truths, and the biological imperative to proliferate is one of them.

>>>/reddit/

>Capitalism values profitability above technological and human progress.

Not exactly OP.
Capitalism is a greedy algorithm where it attempts to maximize local maximums and minimize local minimums. Prices are just indicators for what is needed. I recommend you read the book "Who gets what and why", its written by an econ PhD and will open your eyes to how the world works.

The downside of capitalism is that everyone exists to basically feed the machine. But at the same time humans did bad shit to each other for a long time anyway. Ah... waiting for that sweet nuclear armageddon (a probabilistic certainty) to wipe the slate clean.

>Environmental activists screamed loud enough and had it mostly banned from jurisdictions.

Dishonest claim. The Concorde was not allowed to cruise at supersonic speed over land because it would destroy fucking every window along its path, 10 km down. It used to fly a service between Texas and NYC for a short period but because of its specialized design, it was not as efficient as a slower moving widebody jet.

>Same thing happened to nuclear energy research as well. Most reactors we use today are based off of designs from the 60s for a nuclear submarine. Environmentalists screamed loud enough and the costs became prohibitively expensive, governments regualted nuclear to be unprofitable etc.

This is a really poor understanding of the subject.

>A government can speed up the innovation process by funding things like the Apollo missions but eventually there would be a private group who would accomplish the same thing in the goal of making a profit off of their innovation/ invention.

There was no entity in the world in the 1960s capable of undertaking something like the Apollo program. Did you know that the program employed 400,000 engineers ALONE, across ALL industries. How many companies have that kind of pool of knowledge and expertise under one roof? NONE, and even today there is no private entity capable of sending man to the Moon.

Like I said, private industry can solve the minor problems of civilization, but industry needs direction, which capitalism simply lacks.

What are you talking about? What is more dignifying than freedom, and more humiliating than servitude?

I support the 15/hr wage, mainly because it would cause a economic downturn, massive bailouts, and huge amounts of government money being thrown around.

Think about all of the tax dollars I could make off with. I run a personal care home, and if all of our staff were payed 15/hr we would be put deep into the red unless we raised prices on our elderly, infirm residents. We meet every regulation, and have a perfect record for our inspections, not even dust in the vent covers.

Please, make me even richer, and put all of my employees out of a job.

Capitalists today is far far more long termed focus than governments.

Its a very strange reversal.

The problem is for every enlightened leader, there are likely 2 mediocre ones and 1 monster.

We need a reason to go to the moon. We did it, a few times. But can't fucking justify it on any means other than "advancement" for its own sake.

There is an vast amount of challenges we need to address before its feasible just to send one man for a few hours and get him back safely.
Let alone the logistics to Send a team and equipment and constant fuel. Its tough enough to build a nuclear reactor on earth. Building a nuclear reactor on the moon.

even though hundreds of thousands of years of evolution have made us efficient at living on earth.

>industry needs direction, which capitalism simply lacks.
Indeed.

>Ah... waiting for that sweet nuclear armageddon (a probabilistic certainty) to wipe the slate clean.
That feel

All are slaves; none are free.

>The Apollo program created 400k jorbs
There once was an economist touring China when his tour came upon a dam under construction by a hundred men with shovels. The economist pointed out to his tour guide "You know, if they had a backhoe and modern construction equipment one man could do that job." To which the tour guide replied "But then 99 honest laborers would be out of a job." The economist shrugged, "If it's employment you want then take away their shovels and give them spoons."

My point being what good was really developed from the Apollo program that was so impossible for private industry to accomplish? Certainly putting a flag somewhere before the Russians has a -value-, but that can't be measured in dollars or even technology. If those 400k engineers hadn't spent the better part of two decades working for the government who can even speculate at what they might have been making in private industry. Economically and technologically the space program has been an unmitigated boondoggle. Aside from "inspiring people" it has provided essentially zero return on its investment and tied up generations of bright engineers.

First of all that story is from construction of a Canadian highway.

Second of all, it didn't take 400k engineers to direct the movie you've talked about ;). What would they be doing in private industry? Stuffing ads in your browser? Making your iphone 1mm thinner? Get real.

>What would they be doing in private industry?

Do you think they would just sit around collectively staring at the sun if they had not been employed by the government? They would have had to work and produce things of value for their employers.

>engineers only make phones and browser ads unless the government makes them build "real" stuff.

>Capitalism values profitability above technological and human progress.

Duh... why do you think there are so many pharmaceutical companies focused on making boner pills instead of curing cancer?

On the other hand, you'd be ignorant & naive to think there is another system that has brought more innovation, progress, and technological advancements than capitalism.

Using these specific examples to say that all capitalism is bad is pure ignorance.

>1268114
by the way your picture doesn't support your stamenent. all this picture proves is that cold war is over you dumb niger

Only certain kinds of capitalism are good. Internationalist capitalism = bad, nationalist capitalism = good.

Correct.

Although you could have used a better example: Medicine.

There are many diseases and conditions that go untreated since there is no profit incentive to treatments. Also, half the species will be wiped out by a resistant pathogenic bacteria in the future since there is no profit incentive currently to develop new antibiotics.

>The Apollo program created 400k jorbs

That's not what I said, you loathsome cunt. Very nice strawman tho, you can continue to play out your LARP argument.

>My point being what good was really developed from the Apollo program that was so impossible for private industry to accomplish?

The stupidity ensues.

The technological hub known as Sillicon Valley emerged out of the Apollo program and the various firms and engineers who were a part of it you drooling spastic. Anything to do with modern software or the integrated circuit was pioneered by the Apollo program. So basically, all of the NASDAQ can be attributed to pioneering research done for the Apollo program.

Among other things you have inertial navigation, the microchip, rip-stop fabric, a whole new world of alloys and manufacturing techniques, including CNC.

Since you obviously don't read books, I'd recommend you look-up a 5-part series called Moon Machines, where they interview the engineers directly involved in the development of these technologies.

youtube.com/watch?v=9YA7X5we8ng

>this faggot never seen the true fuckery that is Apple
oh ok, back stepping a decade of comp development just so they can mass market to hipster douche bags and get more profit than if they would use new tech is progress

I guess this is also why you justisfy that you being 400lb fatso is the true meaning of being healthy

>Dishonest claim.
No it was banned from flying over europe and the US because of these Environmental activists lobbying to ban their use. Do you think that these planes would have flown over populated areas without liability? They would be forced to come up with creative solutions via innovation to fix these problems like entrepreneurs do everyday.

>This is a really poor understanding of the subject.
No they restricted nuclear energy research to government entities and than minimized fusion energy research because it wasn't compatible with nuclear weapons. By today we could have had miniaturized molten salt thorium reactors (which can't be weaponized and don't melt down) but we don't because it was more politically advantageous to attack nuclear instead of promoting innovation.

>Like I said, private industry can solve the minor problems of civilization, but industry needs direction, which capitalism simply lacks.
in 10 years elon musk has made rockets that can land upright after returning from launching their payload into space, sure its not 100% reliable yet but he has accomplished something amazing within the same time period as the Apollo missions and it wasn't part of a massive government project with 400,000 engineers allocated to it. The first planes, rockets, telecommunication systems etc all invented and made by individuals or private groups. Capitalism goes hand in hand with entrepreneurs and inventors. Those people create innovation, capitalism just provides the mechanism to efficiently allocate resources based off of returning a profit which will occur if there is in fact innovation that leads to efficiency.

The government isn't capable of innovating. All it can do is reallocate resources by force by taking from productive people/ groups ( taxes on business and personal) and give it to other causes that aren't as productive on their own.

Government's intervention in the market corrupts capitalism and replaces it with corporatism.

>>My point being what good was really developed from the Apollo program that was so impossible for private industry to accomplish?
>The stupidity ensues.
>The technological hub known as Sillicon Valley emerged out of the Apollo program and the various firms and engineers who were a part of it you drooling spastic. Anything to do with modern software or the integrated circuit was pioneered by the Apollo program. So basically, all of the NASDAQ can be attributed to pioneering research done for the Apollo program.

WRONG

The Government fails when it trys to to innovate/ invent new things. SV has been so successful because it is developing new tech that isn't regulated by the government. Why are these huge government groups such as the UN, the EU such complete failures. Is it because they don't have complete power and if they did then they wouldn't make any mistakes?

Quit being such a good goy. Try having an original thought instead of regurgitating globalist propaganda.